Wednesday, November 29, 2017

The Man behind the Gun (Warner Bros, 1953)

Randy saves the day (again)

The
Man Behind the Gun is one of the most entertaining
Randolph Scott Westerns. No one would pretend that it is a great example of the
genre, and of course 1953 was the year of mighty pictures like Paramount’s Shane, MGM’s The Naked Spur and Warners’ own Hondo.
But there is a crackle of humor throughout the movie and Randy seemed to be
enjoying himself hugely. There are even bawdy jokes that must have sneaked
somehow under the censors’ radar. And it’s in bright Technicolor and packed
with action. It’s a whole lot of fun.

It’s a California Western, almost a
sub-genre. It’s odd to see the ocean in a Western, somehow. It is set in pre-Civil War LA, with the usual California
plot of traitorous politicians wanting to secede to make a slave state, though the
date doesn’t stop the writers having a bit in which Randy on the stage admires
the “new-fangled six-shooter” of one of the passengers, who has somehow acquired
an 1873 Peacemaker. Actually, this early scene is a straight steal from Virginia City, with Scott doing the
Errol Flynn bit of surreptitiously unloading the pistol and the great Anthony
Caruso taking Bogart’s role of bandit holding up the stage. Pity it was a Colt
and not a derringer, as in Bogie’s case, but never mind.

Randy is pretending to be a disgraced Army man, posing as a bookish schoolmaster who is no good
with guns. Of course we all know he is no such thing. Like Gary Cooper in Springfield Rifle the year before, he is
actually undercover, and he is aiming to defuse that heinous secesh plot.

Our hero

He has two sidekicks in the
shape of whip-wielding Monk (Dick Wesson) and burly Olaf (Alan Hale Jr.) Wesson, who was the comic relief in Calamity Jane the same year, only did
three Westerns (the other was the Guy Madison outing The Charge at Feather River, also in ‘53) but he had a comic gift
and is amusing in this one. At one point he has to dress up as a settler’s wife
on a Trojan-horse wagon full of hidden soldiers and so there is plenty of scope
for broad 1950s cross-dressing humor. He even toys with using a couple of
oranges as breasts, but I don’t know how that got past the Hays Office in the
early 50s. As for Alan Hale, the son of Errol Flynn’s buddy Alan Hale Sr., he
had a long career well before Gilligan’s Island,
and did huge numbers of big- and small-screen Westerns from 1947 to 1975. He
was always enjoyable to watch. He plays a strongman who manages to lift a
huge rock to win $500 (though the onlookers do not know that Dick and Randy are
in the cellar below, levering the boulder up).

Hale and Wesson do their schtick

The villains are Morris Ankrum and Roy
Roberts, so that’s good. Like most besuited politicians in Westerns, they are
corrupt, scheming, ruthless and evil. Plus ça change... The excellent Douglas Fowley is there
too, as the crooked saloon keeper. I always like Douglas.

There are two dames for Randy to hover
between, as was conventional, a prim blonde one, the real schoolteacher, Lora,
and a racier and sultrier saloon gal (actually she’s the co-owner of the
joint), Chona. Lora is played by beautiful Patrice Wymore, who had starred with
Errol Flynn (that man again) in Rocky
Mountain in 1950, becoming Mrs. Flynn later the same year. She had been in The Big Trees with Kirk Douglas in '52 but did no other big-screen Westerns (though quite a few TV ones) before
retiring to care for her ailing husband. The fiery Lina Chomay, who had been a singer in Xavier Cugat’s band, is saloon singer
Chona. She is also, it turns out, leader of the gunrunners, storing rifles and
powder in her saloon cellar (Randy discovers the guns there while helping Olaf lift the rock), and she is a crack shot too. In an enjoyable
reversal she tells her men to run for safety while she holds off Randy effectively with
her (1870s) six-shooter. It was the last picture of Ms. Chomay’s too-short
career. She retired from film
making after marrying the wealthy grandson of railroad magnate Jay Gould. “I
know I looked like hot stuff in my movies,” she said years later, “and I was hot stuff!” I am forced to concur.

Phil is engaged to Patrice but fancies Lina, while Randy eyes up Lina but may go for Patrice: it's all pretty tense, my dears

Phil Carey is there, as an Army captain
whom we first suspect to be in cahoots with the bad guys but who turns out to be a moderately
good egg. He and Randy are rivals for the attentions of both dames. Carey was
busy out West that year, what with Gun Fury,
Calamity Jane andThe Nebraskan.

The picture was directed by Felix Feist
(rather a good name, that) who had done The
Big Trees and who would later also direct The Californians on TV, so he was a bit of a California-Western
specialist.

It's a Feisty picture

It was written by John Twist, Warners
B-Western regular, who had also worked on The
Big Trees, as well as on Dallas and Fort Worth (another Scott picture), from
a story by Robert Buckner, who did Flynn Westerns Santa Fe Trail, Dodge Cityand
Virginia City. It’s all historical hooey, of course, but they put together an
action-packed plot with explosions, horse chases, skullduggery galore and
gunfights aplenty. Actually, some of the horse chase footage was lifted from San Antonio, the flat, dusty Texas scenery looking
out of place among the lush Californian greenery. I think Jack Nicholson must
have seen this movie because there’s a sub-plot of cutting off the water for
nefarious ends. It’s a kind of Chinatown
ante diem. There’s a stunt I didn’t like in which a horse is ridden off a
bridge into a river. The horse is shown walking out of the river afterwards, to
reassure us, but that bit is clumsily edited in and I reckon it was another
horse.

The Californian locations were nicely
shot by good old Bert Glennon, a John Ford (and Errol Flynn) regular. Music is
by David Buttolph and suitably rambunctious. The whole thing is full of energy.

One interesting thing: Joaquin Murietta
features in it. Murietta, or Murieta or Murietta, as you prefer, played here as a dashing young smiling bandit by Robert Cabal, Hey
Soos in Rawhide, was known as the Robin
Hood of El Dorado, and he was a Mexican patriot hero/villainous bandit (you choose)
who was the model for Zorro. Walter Noble Burns wrote a sensational biography
of him in 1932 and Warner Baxter played him in the 1936 MGM film directed by
William A Wellman. He was apparently found and killed, and then beheaded, by
some California Rangers in 1853, though conspiracy theories abound and many believe the
amputated noggin was not that of the colorful brigand.

A dime-novel idea of Murietta

Cabal as Murietta

The title, rather similar to Columbia's The Stranger Wore a Gun of the same
year, was to have been City of Angels,
which I rather like, but Warners preferred Man with the Gun. However,that had
been snaffled by RKO for Bob Mitchum - it would come out in '55 - so the studio contented itself with Man Behind the Gun. OK, whatever. At
least Nicolas Cage and Meg Ryan were able to grab the title nearly half a
century later.

In any case this is a must-see for Randy
fans, and in fact all Westernistas worth their salt will want to have a go.